BILL ANALYSIS
AB 30
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Date of Hearing: May 6, 2009
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Kevin De Leon, Chair
AB 30 (Price) - As Introduced: December 1, 2008
Policy Committee: ElectionsVote:5-2
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
Yes Reimbursable: Yes
SUMMARY
This bill:
1)Permits a person who is at least 16 years of age to submit an
affidavit of voter registration, which shall be deemed
effective as of the date the registrant will be 18 years of
age if the registration information is still current.
2)Requires the local registrar of births and deaths to notify
the county elections official monthly of all deceased persons
16 years of age and over (rather than 18 years of age and
over) whose deaths are registered with the registrar.
3)Makes all of the above effective only after the Secretary of
State (SOS) certifies that the state has a voter registration
database in compliance with the federal Help America Vote Act.
FISCAL EFFECT
1)The Secretary of State (SOS) will incur additional GF costs
associated with printing and mailing additional voter
registration cards and voter notification cards. There are
currently about one million persons age 16 or 17 in the state.
Assuming 50,000 persons in this cohort pre-register each year,
the cost would be about $44,000. (This estimate assumes
pre-registration would occur predominantly through
distribution of registration cards through schools, thus
requiring only return postage.) The cost would be offset to
some extent by savings from those who would have otherwise
registered at age 18.
2)Counties would incur GF reimbursable costs to process
AB 30
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additional voter registrations. Assuming 50,000
pre-registrations annually at a cost of $1.40 each (based on
workload data from Los Angeles and Alameda Counties), the
statewide cost would be $70,000. Again, these costs would be
partially offset by a reduction in registration of those who
would have otherwise registered upon reaching the legal voting
age.
COMMENTS
1)Purpose . The author indicates that more than 45% of eligible
voters between age 18 and 24 were not registered in 2004 (the
most recent data available. The author cites research showing
that people who get involved in the political process at a
young age are much more likely to become lifelong voters, thus
he argues that facilitating participation by younger voters
can have positive long term effects on overall voter
participation.
According to the author, "AB 30 does not change the voting
age, but by allowing 16 and 17 year olds to register to vote
when they go to the DMV to get their first driver's licenses,
or when they are taking civics and government classes in high
school, it will help those individuals take the first steps
towards a lifetime of participation in our democracy."
In order to minimize the costs of implementing this bill, the
author has included a provision that will delay the
implementation of pre-registration until January 1, 2010, by
which time the statewide voter database (VoteCal) system is
scheduled to be deployed.
2)Current law allows anyone to register to vote if they will be
18 years old by the time of the next election.
3)Prior Legislation . This bill is substantially similar to AB
1819 (Price) of 2008, which was held on Suspense in Senate
Appropriations.
4)Related Legislation . AB 106 (Price), pending on this
committee's Suspense file, automatically registers a person to
vote when he or she applies for a driver's license or state
identification card or files a tax return, unless that person
opts-out.
AB 30
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ACA 2 (Furutani), pending in Assembly Elections, allows a person
who is at least 17 years of age and will be at least 18 years
of age at the time of the next general election to register to
vote in that general election and in any intervening primary
or special election that occurs after the person registers.
Analysis Prepared by : Chuck Nicol / APPR. / (916) 319-2081